Many cities in the East Coast of the United States continue to dig out after record-breaking amounts of snow fell over the weekend. The community of Glengary in the state of West Virginia had the most snowfall, with 100 centimeters recorded.
The storm’s “official” name was Winter Storm Jonas. The Weather Channel began naming large winter storms three years ago, just as the National Weather Service has done with tropical storms and hurricanes for many years.
But some cities decided on different names for the weekend’s snowstorm. In Washington, D.C., residents voted to name the storm “Snowzilla,” a play on the famous monster, Godzilla.
The Washington Post created a poll for residents to vote on their favorite storm name. Snowzilla beat out “Make Winter Great Again.” That name is a play on the presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign expression, “Make America Great Again.”
After the re-naming of the storm, the hashtags #snowzilla and #snowzilla2016 trended on Twitter and Facebook.
One Twitter user posted a photo of a street sign that read “Lizzard Warning” instead of "Blizzard Warning." The missing “B” at the beginning of the word made it similar to the word “lizard,” with one "z." And, Godzilla himself is similar to a giant lizard.
Some people had fun with the mistake, and added images of Godzilla into the photo:
Twitter user NumbersMuncher posted a photo of a car that appears to be in the giant mouth of a Godzilla-like monster. Of course, the mouth was created from snow:
Godzilla was not even the storm’s most famous creature. That honor goes to Tian Tian, a giant panda at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. A video of Tian Tian playing in the snow on Saturday has received over 55 million views on Facebook.
Words in This Story
dig - v. to move away soil, sand, snow, etc., often in order to create a hole
tropical storm - n. a powerful storm that begins in the tropics and that has winds which are not as strong as those of a hurricane
hurricane - n. an extremely large, powerful, and destructive storm with very strong winds that occurs especially in the western part of the Atlantic Ocean
monster - n. a strange or horrible imaginary creature
blizzard - n. a severe snowstorm that goes on for a long time
lizard - n. a type of reptile that has four legs and a long body and tail
creature - n. an animal of any type